WhatsApp Business API pricing changes: what Meta changed on 1 October 2026, and before

The short version

1. Replies (Meta calls them service messages) are charged again from 1 October 2026. Each business phone number gets 1,000 free a month; Meta charges from the 1,001st.
2. Utility templates you send inside the 24-hour window, for example an order confirmation to someone who just wrote to you, are charged from 1 October 2026. They had been free since 1 July 2025.
3. Marketing, utility and authentication rates for India did not change on 1 October 2026.
4. Messages a customer sends you are still free, and Meta still charges only for messages that are delivered.
5. Without a payment method on your Meta account, Meta delivers your first 1,000 replies a month and then stops delivering replies.

How Meta charges now

Meta's developer page (updated 30 September 2026) says Meta has charged per message since 1 July 2025, and charges only for messages from a business to a user, only when a message is delivered. The rate depends on two things: the message's category, and the country calling code of the person you send it to.

A message has exactly one category, so it can carry at most one charge. Meta lists five categories:

1. Marketing: templates for promotion.
2. Utility: templates for transactions or information, such as an order or payment update.
3. Authentication: templates for one-time codes.
4. Service: any message that is not a template, sent inside the 24-hour window after a customer writes. These are your replies, typed by a person or sent by a bot.
5. Meta Business Agent: replies written by Meta's own AI agent, added on 1 July 2026 (see below).

What it costs in India

From Meta's rupee rate card, effective 1 October 2026, for messages to Indian numbers (+91):

1. Marketing: ₹0.8631 a message.
2. Utility: ₹0.115 a message.
3. Authentication: ₹0.115 a message. Authentication-international: ₹2.4971. Meta charges this only to a business based outside India that Meta has found eligible, which takes more than 750,000 such messages in a moving 30 days, with 30 days' notice by email.
4. Service (replies after the free 1,000): ₹0.115 a message.
5. Meta Business Agent: US$2.00 per million tokens.

These are Meta's list rates. For utility and authentication, Meta's volume tiers lower the rate once a business portfolio sends enough in a month to India; the tier thresholds are in a separate file on the same page. Meta's Help Centre article on billing in India says invoices from Facebook India carry 18% GST. Our India pricing page has a calculator with these rates.

Replies: 1,000 free a month, then charged

What Meta's developer page says about the free tier:

1. It applies to service messages only, from midnight on 1 October 2026 in your Meta messaging account's time zone.
2. It is per business phone number: each number gets its own 1,000 delivered replies a month.
3. Unused free replies do not roll over. The count starts again at midnight on the 1st of each month, in your account's time zone.
4. If your Meta account has no payment method, Meta delivers replies inside the free 1,000 and does not deliver them after that. Meta asks businesses to add a payment method in Billing Hub.
5. For eligible government bodies and non-profits that Meta has identified, replies stay free beyond the 1,000 until 31 December 2027. Meta says it is still building a way for others to ask whether they qualify.

Meta also says these service-message changes do not apply to "AI Providers", whom it charges under a separate policy. Meta's terms define AI Providers as providers and developers of AI technologies such as large language models, generative AI platforms and general-purpose AI assistants offering services on the Platform. A business whose own chatbot answers its own customers is not named as one.

Utility templates inside the 24-hour window

From 1 July 2025 until 30 September 2026, a utility template sent while the customer's 24-hour window was open was free. From 1 October 2026 Meta charges it at the utility rate. So an order confirmation, a payment receipt or a delivery update sent to someone who wrote to you in the last 24 hours now costs ₹0.115 in India, the same as one sent outside the window.

A plain reply (not a template) in the same window is a service message instead, and counts against your free 1,000.

Still free: the window after an ad

When someone messages you from a Click to WhatsApp ad on an Android or iPhone, and you reply within the 24-hour window, Meta's developer page says that reply opens a free entry point window that can stay open for up to 7 days. While it is open, Meta does not charge for marketing, utility, authentication or service messages. Meta Business Agent messages are still charged. The ad itself is paid for separately.

Meta's developer page says this window is shared by every messaging account sending on that number, and that messages sent in it do not count towards volume tiers.

Where Meta's own pages disagree

As read on 5 October 2026, some of Meta's own pages still describe the rules from before 1 October 2026:

1. Meta's Business Help Centre article "About billing for your WhatsApp Business account" says Meta does not charge for service or utility messages sent in response to users inside the 24-hour window, and that the free window after an ad lasts 72 hours. It mentions no free tier of 1,000.
2. Meta's WhatsApp Business pricing page (business.whatsapp.com) also says service messages, and utility messages sent in response to users, are not charged, and that the free window lasts 3 days (72 hours).
3. Meta's developer page, updated 30 September 2026, and Meta's rate card effective 1 October 2026 say replies are charged after 1,000 a month, utility templates in the window are charged, and the free window after an ad lasts up to 7 days.
4. The two older pages also count a Facebook Page call-to-action button as a way to open the free window. The developer page names only Click to WhatsApp ads.
5. Meta's AI Providers page (updated 1 September 2026) says, in one paragraph, that Meta charges for service messages from 1 October 2026, and in another that other businesses are not charged for non-template messages in an open window. It is a page about AI Providers only.

Meta does not explain the difference. The developer page is the dated one, and the rate card is what Meta bills from, so this guide follows them. If you need certainty for a contract or a budget, check your own charges in WhatsApp Manager after the first week of a month.

A worked example

A shop in India with one WhatsApp number sends, in a month, to Indian numbers: 3,000 replies to customers who wrote in, 500 order confirmations (utility templates) to people who had written in the last 24 hours, and 2,000 marketing templates. At Meta's list rates, before GST:

1. Replies: the first 1,000 free, then 2,000 at ₹0.115 = ₹230.
2. Order confirmations inside the window: 500 at ₹0.115 = ₹57.50.
3. Marketing: 2,000 at ₹0.8631 = ₹1,726.20.
4. Total: ₹2,013.70 a month. Under the rules until 30 September 2026, the same month cost ₹1,726.20: the replies and the confirmations were free.

A shop with two numbers gets 2,000 free replies, 1,000 on each. If some of these chats started from a Click to WhatsApp ad, the messages in that free window cost nothing.

Meta Business Agent, the new category

Since 1 July 2026 Meta has a fifth category for replies written by its own AI agent. Meta charges one global rate of US$2.00 per million tokens, and says one message typically uses 20,000 to 25,000 tokens, about 4 to 5 US cents a message. There is no free tier and no volume tier for it, and it is charged even inside the free window after an ad. Replies written by people, or by AI from another company, are service messages instead.

Earlier changes, in order

From the history section of Meta's developer page, the changes that matter for India:

1. 1 November 2024: service conversations became free for all businesses.
2. 1 July 2025: Meta moved from charging per conversation to charging per message. Utility templates sent inside the 24-hour window became free, and volume tiers began for utility and authentication.
3. September 2025: Meta published a pricing calendar (below).
4. 1 January 2026: Meta raised the India marketing rate. Billing in rupees through Facebook India began for businesses whose billing country is India.
5. 1 April 2026: Meta raised the India authentication-international rate.
6. 1 July 2026: Meta Business Agent became a category of its own.
7. 1 October 2026: replies charged again after 1,000 free a month per number; utility templates inside the window charged; 40 rates changed in other countries, none of them India's.

When Meta can change prices next

Meta's pricing calendar says it may change pricing only on the first day of a quarter: 1 January, 1 April, 1 July or 1 October. It promises at least 1 month's notice for a rate change, 3 months for an addition to the pricing model (such as volume tiers) and 6 months for a change of model (such as the move to per-message pricing). So the earliest the India rates can change again is 1 January 2027, and only if Meta announces it at least a month before.

One more date for India: Meta says businesses billed in India must have every WhatsApp Business account in rupees by 31 December 2026, and that from 1 January 2027 it will stop delivering messages from their accounts that are not in rupees. Meta's two pages describe who this covers differently: the developer page says Solution Providers and directly integrated businesses whose "Sold to" country is India; the Help Centre article is written for businesses on monthly invoicing with a line of credit. Check the currency of your account in WhatsApp Manager.

What to do now

1. Make sure your Meta account has a payment method, or replies stop after 1,000 in a month.
2. Check how many replies each number sends in a month. Under 1,000, nothing changes for you.
3. Expect utility templates sent to people who just wrote to you to be charged; where a plain reply does the job inside the window, it counts against your free 1,000 instead.
4. Look at your charges in WhatsApp Manager (the Insights tab shows messaging and spend) a week into the month.
5. Check that your account's currency is rupees before 31 December 2026 if you are billed in India.

What this means with VartaAPI

VartaAPI is a Meta Tech Provider, so Meta bills you directly for messages at the rates above, on the payment method in your own Meta account. VartaAPI adds nothing to Meta's rates; our plan is a separate price for the software. The calculator on our India pricing page includes the free 1,000 replies a month and the utility charge inside the window.